Reid raised about the same amount in the same period, but he has a whopping $9 million COH. He’s raised about $19 million so far this cycle and will probably raise at least $25 million by time this is all said, done and won.

And: Does anyone doubt that a couple of Reid’s many millions has already been flagged for a huge ad buy in September and October?

The NRSC (and Ralston via Twitter) this morning point to a story in National Journal’s Hotline saying GOP candidate Sharron Angle has been raising about $100,000 per day since she won the primary.

Her campaign was slightly (about $30K) in debt pre-primary, so this is good news for her.

Having said that, Harry Reid will raise and spend at least $25M on this race, so Angle has a long way to go to match him so she can try to battle it out on the Nevada airwaves.

I do wonder, though, if Angle really needs That much money in order to beat the Majority Leader. Reid’s low approval ratings didn’t budge much even after he had spent roughly $9M during primary season, so maybe this is a race in which money doesn’t mean what it usually does.

(I’ll wait for everyone to stop laughing before I continue…)

Is it possible Reid could spend another $10M on ads and still find himself in only the high 30s or low 40s? That his “all I’ve done for Nevada” messages – much of which, to be fair to him, is quite true – will not resonate one bit in a state that is suffering so badly? And that every time Harry Reid’s face is on TV, even in a positive context, it elicits an “Oh yeah, we don’t like that guy” instead of an “Ain’t he grand” reaction?

As has been said repeatedly, this election will largely depend on voter sentiment about the economy. Unfortunately for Reid, most fiscal indicators show little movement. And Nevada will be behind the national curve, so it is unlikely we’ll see even the foreshadowing of a recovery here before November.

If the narrative people carry close to their hearts is The Economy Is Still Wrecked: Harry and Friends to Blame! it’s quite possible all the TV ads in the world will not save him. In fact, voter vitriol might be further fueled by the fact that Reid will be pouring $10 to $15 million into saving his, er, seat at a time so many regular people are hurting.

Don’t be surprised if you see an Angle ad saying just that.

I will be curious to observe and tally all the ad buys and then look at the polls in thirty days or so.

Maybe I’m biased because I think Seinfeld was one of the best sitcoms Ever. But still, this is amusing and deserves kudos, from the Rory Reid campaign:

YADDA, YADDA, YADDA

What’s a tastier treat than a muffin top, more comfortable than a mansierre, and more topical than a coffee table book about coffee tables?

Seeing Jerry Seinfeld, live!

Don’t miss this amazing opportunity – it’ll be like Festivus!

Join the 20/10 Club today to get in on the drawing!

TONIGHT at midnight, we’ll draw the names of TWO lucky winners to join Rory and Cindy at Jerry Seinfeld’s Caesars Palace show this Friday night! Each of our two winners will get a pair of tickets to the show.

To get in on the drawing, all you have to do is join the 20/10 Club – our grassroots fundraising effort that lets YOU own a piece of Rory’s campaign for the governor’s office. It’s just $20 a month through November, and it will go a long way to carry Rory to victory!

If you’re our lucky winner, we’ll call to let you know. We’ll also announce the winner on Rory’s Facebook page.

Thanks in advance for joining our grassroots effort. Rory is the only candidate who will stand up for education and set Nevada on the path to a better future. Your help will make all the difference in this important campaign.

He raised slightly less than what she did in 1Q — $455K. Difference: She matched hers dollar for dollar. And she’s been running a lot more TV than he has.

“We’ve had some early image success that hasn’t shown up on the ballot yet,” his campaign said in a release, including a graph that shows his favorables among GOP voters (via Rasmussen) are better than Lowden’s.

Leaked to the press here and there last night and announced early this morning via CSPAN and PJTV, the Tea Party Express (TPE) has endorsed Sharron Angle, calling her a “a hero for conservatives and the tea party movement” and saying there is no candidate “who can match her record of principled conservatism.”

(Sidebar: Everyone who was having a cow at the rumor of a Chachas endorsement can now relax.)

Joe Wierzbicki, Coordinator for the TPE, said they will “invest the resources necessary for Sharron Angle to win the Republican primary.”

Yeah? I wonder if Joe & Co. understand what “necessary” means in this case?

If you believe a recent survey of GOP voters, Angle would pull in only 5% of the vote if the primary were held today. I don’t believe that number and based on what I know both of internal polling and what’s going on with Nevada’s grassroots, I’d guess Angle’s actual fraction is closer to between 10 and 15%.

Still, it’s gonna take some major TV time and some lucky breaks to earn her a win in June. The first of which will be costly and the second of which is up to the Fates.

Ralston says he sees a way:

I have always said in low turnout primary she has a chance — if only she can get money.

And:

Remember Angle, boosted by outside spending by the Club for Growth, almost defeated (400 votes out of 100,000 cast in 5-way race) a much better funded Dean Heller for Congress four years ago. TPE is not CFG. But it may not have to be in this 12-way race.

If TPE gets on TV for Angle, it’s a new ballgame…

I’m not sure this is going to be a low turnout primary, though. All factions of the base are energized — some of them sporting smiles and their We-Can-Do-It tees while many are scowling and just downright PO’d over one thing or another — so I’m predicting one of the higher turnouts we’ve seen in awhile.

And Angle’s close race against Heller was a different ball game in many ways, so some comparisons may not hold.

But: that’s not to say Angle doesn’t have a shot at the nomination, though I think it’s a very slim one. Lowden’s lead and campaign coffers are substantial, and many in the GOP support her because they believe she is the only candidate with a real shot at defeating Harry Reid.

As for the subject of Angle in the general election…

Most (all?) media and political insiders — on both sides of the aisle — say there is just no way Angle can beat Reid. Even if she can somehow climb and conquer Primary Hill in the 54 days remaining, she’ll have Harry Reid’s $25 million war chest and a very skeptical electorate waiting for her on June 9th.

– convince moderate Republicans, independents and some conservative Democrats that her as-far-right-as-it-gets outlook on the state’s/nation’s issues is preferable to tolerating Reid for another term

– fend off the Reid-funded TV ads that will predict the fall of civilization if she is elected

– convince Nevada and national donors that she can beat Reid, if only she has the bank, such that they generously open their checkbooks

IF she could do all that and somehow, some way eke out a win, it would be The political story of the year — and by far the biggest Tea Party victory yet.

Is the vision of that improbable, incredible headline — “Angle Beats Reid!” — enough to get major money flowing in and give Angle better than her current snowball’s chance of taking down the most powerful man in the U.S. Senate? You may laugh at the suggestion that she could ever carve out such a scenario, but you can be sure the vision and the hope of that very thing will bring Tea Party money pouring in to her campaign should she survive the primary.

Harry Reid is so deeply, viscerally hated that I can envision one million “plus” Tea Partiers and conservatives from across the land donating $25 each to Angle in various online moneybomb fundraising events — the same kind that quickly raised many millions for Scott Brown in Massachusetts — which would at least even up the money game.

Harry Reid reports in with $1.5 million raised in this most recent quarter.

US Senate candidate Sue Lowden took in $500,000 and per her earlier promise will match those funds with her own money, so that’s $1 million for Team Lowden. Of course, we’ll have to see what her cash on hand is in light of how much was spent on her many TV ads.

Team Tark hasn’t furnished a figure yet but says they raised “more” than last quarter ($372,000).

No word yet from the two other Senate candidates who presumably also raised substantial funds and have either a good (Angle) or long (Chachas) shot in the primary.

If you don’t know what a moneybomb is, Wikipedia has a pretty good working definition (slightly edited by me):

A “moneybomb” (aka money bomb, money-bomb and/or fundraising bomb) is a neologism coined in 2007-ish to describe a grassroots fundraising effort over a brief fixed time period, usually to support a candidate for election by dramatically increasing, concentrating and publicizing fundraising activity. The term was first applied to a supporter-led fundraiser on behalf of presidential candidate Ron Paul; the Mercury News then described a moneybomb as being “a one-day fundraising frenzy”. The effort combines traditional and Internet-based fundraising appeals focusing especially on viral advertising through online vehicles such as YouTube, Myspace, Meetup, Twitter and other online forums.

The most recent major (successful) moneybomb was orchestrated by Scott Brown who held a 24-hour online fundraiser beginning at midnight EST on Monday, January 11, 2010 with a goal of raising $500,000. The Republican candidate was able to reach that financial milestone a little past 4pm EST that day and by the end of the day had successfully raised over $1 million, more then twice the original goal. (His campaign office later stated it raised $5 million over the period from January 11–15, much of it from online marketing efforts and donations.)

Public Policy Polling has a blog post on a floundering Tea Party candidate in Texas, followed by general comments (emphasis mine):

Unless there’s been a big shift in the final week of the campaign in Texas it appears that Debra Medina will fall well short of making a Republican runoff.

A 20% performance for Medina would still be impressive, given the two political titans she’s facing off against. But her lack of sustained momentum after peaking at 24% in our polling three weeks ago will also show several limitations of the ‘Tea Party’ movement:

1) Just as we saw with Patrick Hughes in Illinois, if you can’t compete with the big boys financially, you can’t compete with the big boys, period. Perry and Hutchison have had the funds to saturate the airwaves and Medina hasn’t, and that’s why her name recognition was still under 50% on our final poll of the Texas race. These Republican insurgents may not need a ton of money to make some noise, but they do need a ton of money to actually win anything. Without the interference of the Club for Growth or some similarly deep pocketed group Medina never had a chance.

2) Republican voters may be more open to candidates from outside the mainstream of their party this year but there’s a limitation to how far outside the mainstream you can be and still hope to get some traction. 79% of Texas Republicans have a favorable opinion of George W. Bush. So Medina made a big mistake by allowing the perception to be created that Bush’s administration may have had something to do with 9/11. Tea Party candidates need to be able to avoid the ‘kook’ label if they’re going to be successful - it will be interesting in Kentucky to see if some of Rand Paul’s past statements end up really hurting him the way Medina’s did her.

For all the hype about the Tea Party movement I think it’s entirely possible Marco Rubio will end up being the only candidate associated with it to win a major primary this year – that will certainly be the case if its folks don’t start raising more money.

I think PPP is mostly right, with this exception/addition: Tea Party candidates can raise gobs of money online if they run in the “right” races and energize the conservative blogosphere and Twittersphere as now-Senator Scott Brown did. By establishing himself as a Tea Party guy (who has since turned out to be a Massachusetts moderate – oops!) Brown raised $12 million online in the last two weeks of his campaign, much of it via “money bombs” (i.e., fundraising links sent out en masse via Twitter and conservative/Tea Party blogs and mailing lists). This influx of funds was less about Brown and his little tan pick-up truck than the conservatives/Tea Partiers salivating at the thought of taking Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, but the point is: Brown established himself as the Man of the Hour and the online donations poured in from around the country.

Come October, I think the Harry Reid race could be another Money Bomb Central. Harry is despised by the conservative/Tea Party peeps even more than Teddy was. They will be rabid to defeat him. Whether they will split asunder (Lowden? Tarkanian? Angle?) or line up behind one candidate in the primary and then in the general (Republican or Tea Party candidate?) will be very interesting to see.

Which reminds me:

Tea Party of Nevada candidate Jon Scott Ashjian… When are you going to file, sir?!

Chuck Muth, staunch fiscal conservative and Nevada’s steward of The Tax Pledge, today had this to say in response to statements in a Governor Gibbons’ fundraising email yesterday:

Meanwhile, in an email fundraising solicitation to supporters yesterday…Gov. Jim Gibbons said he promised not to raise taxes and that he kept that promise. The governor also wrote that the “liberal media (was) playing their deceptive game of lies” by pointing out that he initially included a $292 room tax hike in his 2009 budget, claiming the “tax increase was approved by voters in Clark County and Washoe County.”

Yikes! I guess I belong to the liberal media – because as much as it pains me to have to do so, I must be honest and call the governor on this (again).

First, the voters of NEVADA didn’t approve that tax hike because only the voters of three of Nevada’s seventeen counties got to vote on it – and one of those counties rejected it. Secondly, what the voters of Clark and Washoe voted on was an advisory question only; the actual initiative presented to the governor and legislators was never on the ballot and the wording was completely different.

Third, the promise the governor made to the people of Nevada, in writing, was to oppose and veto any and all efforts to increase taxes. Putting a $292 million tax hike in your budget is proposing a tax hike, not opposing it….and letting it then become law without your signature sure as heck isn’t vetoing it.

Sorry, Governor. You were great on the tax issue most of the time, but you absolutely did fall off the wagon in this one instance. And that’s no liberal media conspiracy. It’s simply fact.

The uber-liberal Steve Sebelius over at SlashPoliticsalso mentioned this issue the other day, first quoting from the governor’s speech and then commenting:

The statement, tellingly, reads in parts like a campaign speech:

“Nevada government must reduce its spending. Just like everyone at home, the State of Nevada must live within its means,” Gibbons said. “The Democrat-controlled Legislature raised taxes and increased spending, while I stood by my promise to the voters by vetoing their higher taxes and spending. But they wouldn’t listen and now we have to endure the consequences of their actions.”

Technically, Gibbons didn’t stand by his promise entirely — he allowed the room tax increase for casinos in Clark and Washoe counties to go into effect without his signature.

Whether viewed from right or left, a fact is a fact. Gibbons did include a tax increase in his ’09 budget and allow a tax increase to go into effect, so in one instance he did not keep his pledge on taxes.

A source inside the Gibbons campaign says the governor’s latest series of fundraising emails – beginning with the one sent out just a couple of hours after his State of the State speech Monday night – have generated “a surprising number” of donations from individuals. Most of the donations are in $25 or $50 increments, though some are larger.

The source added that the governor has been receiving “hundreds of emails expressing their support” and that “it appears there is pretty strong support for the governor with the base.”

When asked whether supporters in the base are enough to make up for the lack of funds in Gibbons’ campaign coffers, the source said he is “quietly confident” in Gibbons’ ability to win the primary even without large donors.